Last Friday, a WNBA game was scheduled to be played in Washington DC between the Washington Mystics and the visiting Las Vegas Aces. The home team was there, the arena was ready, but the visiting basketball team decided to be a no-show.
What happened?
According to reports, the women’s professional basketball team from Las Vegas needed 26 hours to finally overcome several commercial flight delays related to weather issues in order to fly into the nation’s capital. The team reached their hotel just four hours prior to the scheduled tip-off time Friday. The home team Mystics did their best to help by offering to delay the start of the game by one hour to give the visitors a better chance to catch a little more rest.
After consulting with their union representative, the Las Vegas ladies stated that their team was too tired to safely play a game that night. The Aces were in ninth place in the WNBA standings and just one game out of the final playoff spot.
Yes, the team forfeited the basketball game, because they claimed to be too tired to play. Seriously?
The current roster for the Las Vegas Aces reveals that there are thirteen (count ’em) players on the squad. Couldn’t some of the bench players take a bigger role?
The average age is this team is just 23 years old.
Too tired to play??
Maybe this team had played too many games recently. Upon further review, Las Vegas hosted Phoenix last Wednesday and had 48 hours before their next scheduled game at Washington. Prior to that, the team had not played a game since July 22 (a ten day break).
Too tired to play???
The WNBA is now in its twentieth year of existence. Attendance across the league is considered respectable (the 2017 average attendance was just over 7,000 per game) as the women’s hoops season is played during the summer months instead of the traditional winter basketball season.
Initially, several of the NBA’s team owners founded the women’s professional basketball league in 1997 with eight franchises. Now, only the Phoenix Mercury, Los Angeles Sparks, and the New York Liberty remain from the original eight, but the league has now grown into twelve markets today.
By virtue of surviving twenty years, the WNBA has certainly proven to be a relevant sports entertainment product. The league, though, has struggled for visibility and viability in a congested male-dominated sports landscape and seems to remain stuck operating in its current year-to-year financial trajectory.
If the WNBA wants to be taken seriously, having one of the league’s playoff contenders forfeit a game AFTER already arriving in town hours before the game is simply absurd. Sure, they were tired, but most minor league baseball players and teams travel by bus between cities without getting a day off at all.
These Aces flunked their test with this selfish stunt. Worse, they have dealt the rest of the WNBA an ugly self-inflicted publicity wound as the league’s very survival continues to hang in the balance at the season’s end in September.